Your first Super Bowl

Not as a journalist (sorry, Mizzou ), but as a fan. Didn't want to clog up the 47 thread, and thought this might be fun (and, hopefully, occasionally weird).

Anyway, mine was Super Bowl XIII. It was three days before my 7th birthday. My mom planned a party for me and my friends at the local McDonald's. I nagged her to leave before it was all over because I wanted to watch the game. She eventually acquiesced, and thus began my (often unhealthy) obsession with the NFL.

Yours?

Oh, feel free to add any SB memories, not just the first. No one around here follows directions anyway.

I watched it by myself in my playroom. I had my own carefully prepared Super Bowl appetizer tray and a Polaroid camera. I captured pictures of John Elway on television with my camera throughout the first quarter and tacked them to the playroom wall. I believe that practice ended at some point during the second quarter. I cried throughout that 15 minutes of play and elected to not watch the second half. My parents checked on me throughout the night. I guess I was acting a little dramatic.

About 12 years later, I interviewed Curt Gowdy about the game for a magazine story about the AFC-NFC rivalry. Terrific interview. He called me from an airport with time to kill, and he may have had a drink or two in him, but just a fabulous interview with great anecdotes.

Ruckus, when the Patriots took a 3-0 lead, I got all pissed off and told my dad I was not going to school Monday if the Bears lost. He subsequently made it quite clear I was going to school the next day -- even if the Bears lost by 100. I then started to worry that the Bears might, in fact, lose by 100. I was a tad nervous at the time. An hour later, my dad and I were smiling, laughing and reminiscing about a championship season. Ah, the joys of neurotic teen mood swings.

I want to say XIII, but somebody help me out here -- did they have an early moment of jawboning that involved the teams coming off their sidelines and preening toe-to-toe? That was the Hollywood C-A-T Super Bowl so it's certainly believable.

But if my 7-year-old mind was just making that up, my first memory would be Kenny King busting down the sideline in XV.

ONE!!!
It was supposed to be blacked out here in L.A., but the papers printed diagrams on how to make a temporary TV antenna and point it toward San Diego. Get a stick about 6 feet long, file notches in it about a foot apart. Unbend wire clothes hangers, sand them down if it was painted. Put the hangers into the notches. Connect it all with TV wires and temporarily hook it to the TV.
Didn't work too well.

I was supposed to go with my uncle to the Niners-Dolphins Super Bowl at Stanford Stadium. My parents said $60 was too much to spend on a ticket. My uncle said, "Fuck it, it's a gift. My treat..." and my father said, "We can't let you do that."